Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) by Pater Walter 1839-1894

Author:Pater, Walter, 1839-1894
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Decadence in art; Aesthetics; Aesthetic criticism; Beauty; 12th Century Renaissance; Renaissance

But among die more youdiful heads diere is one at Florence which Love chooses for its own—the head of a young man, which may well be die likeness of Salaino, beloved of Lionardo for his curled and waving hair— belli capelli ricci e inanellati— and afterwards his favourite pupil and servant. Of all the interests in living men and women which may have filled his life at Milan, this attachment alone is recorded; and in return, Salaino identified himself so entirely with Lionardo, that the picture of 'Saint Anne,' in the Louvre, has been attributed to him. It illustrates Lionardo's usual choice of pupils, men of some natural charm of person or intercourse like Salaino, or men of birdi and princely habits of life like Francesco Melzi—men with just enough genius to be capable of initiation into his secret, for the sake of which they were ready to efface their own individuality. Among diem, retiring often to die villa of die Melzi at Canonica al

Vaprio, he worked at his fugitive manuscripts and sketches, working for the present hour, and for a few only, perhaps chiefly for himself. Other artists have been as careless of present or future applause, in self-forgetfulness, or because they set moral or political ends above the ends of art; but in him this solitary culture of beauty seems to have hung upon a kind of self-love, and a carelessness in the work of art of all but art itself. Out of the secret places of a unique temperament he brought strange blossoms and fruits hitherto unknown; and for him the novel impression conveyed, the exquisite effect woven, counted as an end in itself—a perfect end.

And these pupils of his acquired his manner so thoroughly, that though the number of Lionardo's authentic works is very small indeed, there is a multitude of other men's pictures, through which we undoubtedly see him, and come very near to his genius. Sometimes, as in the little picture of the 'Madonna of the Balances,' in which, from the bosom of his mother, Christ weighs the pebbles of the brook against the sins of men, we have a hand, rough enough by contrast, working on some fine hint or sketch of his. Sometimes, as in the subjects of the Daughter of Herodias and the head of John the Baptist, the lost originals have been re-echoed and varied upon again and again by Luini and others. At other times the original remains, but has been a mere theme or motive, a type of which the accessories might be modified or changed; and these variations have but brought out the more the purpose or expression of the original. It is so with the so-called Saint John the Baptist of the Louvre—one of die few naked figures Lionardo painted—whose delicate brown flesh and woman's hair no one would go out into the wilderness to seek, and whose treacherous smile would have us understand something far beyond the outward gesture or circumstance. But the long reed-like

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